


These Things, They Go Away

by ignipes



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-19
Updated: 2005-08-19
Packaged: 2017-10-02 21:43:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes memories of summer were all they had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Things, They Go Away

"Do you remember--" Sirius stopped, left the question hanging in the frozen air between them.

Remus waited for a moment, then asked, "Remember what?" He leaned back on the cold stone step, stretching his legs before him. The garden was quiet, muffled by the grey midwinter twilight. It seemed to him that all the colour had drained out of the world, or at least this small part of it, locked in a silent box behind the row-houses of Grimmauld Place. The trees were pale, the marble statues a dull moss-marred white, the stone walls high and grey. The sun had not shown its face since dawn, and he knew by the fading light that it had finally set, giving up on another January day.

He heard Sirius inhale slowly. When he spoke, it was all in a rush, as quick and jittery as the feeble snowflakes that wound through the barren branches. "Do you remember that night was stole the gillyweed from Slughorn's stock and went swimming in the lake?"

"Yes, of course I do." Robes in a pile beside the lake, pushes and shoves and taunts, the cold sting of water, pale bodies in the light of a waning moon. The shock of choking on air, the rush of relief beneath the water, gliding through an alien world of silver and shadow. More quietly, Remus said, "I remember it."

"You were afraid we'd be eaten by the giant squid."

Sirius' voice was so light, almost unrecognisable, that Remus turned to look at him in surprise. "Of course I was," he said defensively. "It is a carnivore, you know."

"A friendly carnivore, you idiot." Sirius was smiling when he said it. His words formed a warm cloud of steam between them, then vanished.

"We didn't know it was a friendly carnivore until then," Remus pointed out. "And all those tentacles…" He shuddered, remembering the cool slide across his skin, the giant golden eye looming suddenly in the darkness at the base of the cliffs. "What does it need all those tentacles for, if not to capture and devour students?"

"D'ya really think they'd keep a man-eating monster living in the lake at Hogwarts?"

There was a brief silence as they both considered.

"Yes," Remus said, with certainty.

"Probably," Sirius agreed. "Alright, they definitely would. But we didn't get eaten, and we met those mermaids, too."

"They liked you. They wanted to keep you as a pet."

Sirius arched an eyebrow proudly. "As a pet? I think not, Mr. Moony. As a prince, perhaps."

"A pet, to gurgle at and play with."

"A prince, to pamper and worship."

Remus opened his mouth to reply, but the words caught in his throat. The light was almost gone, and all he could see was Sirius' sharp silhouette and glittering eyes. There was a smile on his lips, a genuine smile, gentle with memories of graceful mermaids and gurgling laughter, of the strange golden lights that lit the merpeople's village, of kicking gleefully toward the surface and bursting into the air with gasping laughter and relief.

"We never did go back to visit them," Sirius said wistfully.

No, Remus thought, they never did. But it was probably better that way.

They sat in silence for a while longer, listening to the sounds of the winter night, feeling the warmth of each other's presence. It was cold, much too cold to be sitting outside this late, but Remus could not bring himself to suggest that they go inside. It was only another miserable extension of another miserable prison, this garden inside high stone walls, filled with dancing stone fauns and gnarled branches, with dead trees and empty flower plots. It was only another leaden January night, the sky so dull it might not exist at all except that something had to fill the space overhead. But it was outside, and it was the sky.

"Do you remember--" Sirius stopped, cleared his throat.

Remus waited.

"Do you remember that night you dared us all to swim out to the Isle of Drear and capture a quintaped?"

Remus smiled. "I remember. I remember all too well." Then he laughed suddenly, another night, another swim, another life flashing through his mind. "I think I still have the scars."

There was a pause, barely a heartbeat. "Me, too," Sirius said, shaking his head. Then he laughed, as well, a sound too warm and too alive for the dead, frozen garden.


End file.
